Blog, Promos, Smoothie Recipes

Quick Smoothies – A Frugal Recipe [Acuisina Review + Giveaway!]

Amber Shehan •March 28, 2015

I make a smoothie every single morning. While I appreciate the occasional full “homestyle” breakfast with eggs, bacon, pancakes, toast, and whatever else you have room to cook up, most mornings I just don’t have the appetite to handle all that food. So smoothies it is! I know that there are a lot of folks out…

I make a smoothie every single morning.

While I appreciate the occasional full “homestyle” breakfast with eggs, bacon, pancakes, toast, and whatever else you have room to cook up, most mornings I just don’t have the appetite to handle all that food. So smoothies it is!

I know that there are a lot of folks out there who make smoothies regularly and I know that everyone has their own method. My go-to technique is to use a NutriBullet with a mix of whatever fresh fruits and veggies I have on hand, a splash of milk, juice, and a big old plop of yogurt, too!

Make smoothie starters with Acuisina & Pixie’s Pocket!

I wish I could say that all of my food is certified organic, but I just can’t always afford the premium price tag. However, since my smoothies are made from whole fruits and veggies blended with skins and all, I definitely do my best to choose organic produce for this portion of my diet.

Once or twice a month, I receive a CSA delivery from Mother Earth Produce here in Asheville, but I never seem to use up all of the delicious produce before some of it wilts. Until now.

Acuisina large ice trays are a game changer!

Acuisina sent me a few of their Jumbo 2″ Ice Cube Trays so that I could give them a try and review it for you all, and let me tell you, am I ever glad that they did!

Just after they arrived, I received a beautiful CSA box with plums, strawberries, apples, carrots, cucumbers, and curly leafed kale. I also discovered a HUGE whole milk yogurt tub on sale for $2. Talk about good luck and fortuitous timing…but then I worried about how I’d use it all up in time. Then it hit me: Smoothie Starters!

Quick Smoothies: A Frugal Recipe

The QUICK part of this recipe shows up the following morning when you grab the big cubes of frozen smoothie-starter out of the freezer! The Acuisina silicon trays are very easy to manipulate, and the cubes just pop right out!

The FRUGAL part of this recipe is that you can prepare all of these delicious smoothie cubes when your fruits and veggies are fresh – much less waste, wilt, and rot!

The BEST part of this technique is that you can use whatever you have on hand. Do you like avocado? Throw it in! Prefer non-dairy yogurt and milk? That works, too!

Here’s how it goes:

Assemble your ingredients.

Chop your ingredients into small bits.

Sprinkle those ingredients in the Acuisina large ice tray.

Add a glob of yogurt to each tray.

Fill the rest of the way with mil or juice.

Pop them in the freezer!

Remove them the next day and put them in a freezer bag or other storage container to enjoy over the coming days.

To prepare my morning smoothie, I grab a cube, toss it in my single serving blender cup, add a splash of whatever juice, tea, or herbal infusion I want to include, and give it a whirr!

The Acuisina Review

These trays have saved me both time and money on my good, healthy breakfast routine!

Being unfamiliar with silicon bakeware, I was concerned that the filled trays would be too wiggly to move without spilling, but these guys are strong! They are also really easy to clean, and the silicon makes popping the cubes out just as easy as pie.

Then I realized that these ice trays can be good for so much more than smoothies. Each compartment can hold 1/2 cup, so you can do a ton of recipes with it:

Freeze pesto or sauces

Freeze herbs in olive oil

Freeze water for ice (duh)

Freeze healthy baby food

Freeze yogurt for smoothies or desserts

Freeze leftovers in single serve, healthy portions

Bake square brownies or quick breads or cake

Use as a soap mold

Do you want to give Acuisina Jumbo Ice Trays a try? Buy some here, or enter to win a set of two trays using the widget below!

Smoothies are one of those things I wish I liked more, they’re so good for you! Maybe this summer I’ll finally get better about trying different combinations! Those ice cube trays would be great for freezing broth, I love doing that because I use it to cool off my soup without watering it down!

I can’t do without them now! Easier on my tummy than solid food and quick to make. 🙂 I like your broth cube idea for cooling soup, I never thought of that before! Good Luck, Nicole! (and save me some of that blueberry rum punch, I’m coming over right now!!)

Would love to have a pair of these! The ones i bought on Amazon specifically made for smoothies, never did work properly, were impossible to get the frozen cubes out and the silicon tore after my third attempt. I’ve been Leary about trying any others I seen on Amazon.

I love the smoothie idea. Currently I use small ice cube trays to freeze fresh-squeezed lemon juice, pesto and leftover broth. I’ve also used them for herbs. It would be great to freeze those in larger containers though, like the ones above, so I could just use one cube instead of many.

I’d love these for saving lemon and lemon peel, for frozen herb batches, for pesto, for banana in yogurt, for ice to use in the dog water in the car. I’m going to come up with lots of other ideas as soon as I get some!

These trays are awesome! I would use them for smoothies I think but also maybe soups for lunch. 1/2 cup is a nice size and you could always add two to your lunch if you were more hungry. This would be a nice way to keep leftover sauce as well. That way you could eat it when you wanted and not let it go to waste because you are bored with that meal. I need this tray lol!